Bombs on Aunt Dainty

by Judith Kerr

  They were drooping more than ever but Papa took them from her and said, “They smell of spring.” He filled his toothglass with water and Anna helped him put the flowers in. They immediately fell over the edge of the glass until their heads rested on the table.

  “I’m afraid they’ve already overstrained themselves,” said Papa and everyone laughed. Well, at least they had cheered him up. “Anyway,” said Papa, “the four of us are together. After seven years of emigration perhaps one shouldn’t ask for more luck than that.”

  “Oh yes one should!” said Mama.

  Max grinned. “Seven years is probably as much as anyone actually needs.” He turned to Papa. “What do you think is going to happen about the war? Do you think anything is going to happen at all?”

  “When Hitler is ready,” said Papa. “The problem is whether the British will be ready too.”

  It was the usual conversation and, as usual, Anna’s mind edged away from it. She sat on the bed next to Max and rested her feet. She liked being in Papa’s room. No matter where they had lived, in Switzerland, Paris or London, Papa’s room had always looked the same. There had always been a table with the typewriter, now getting rather rickety, his books, the section of the wall where he pinned photographs, postcards, anything that interested him, all close together so that even the loudest wallpaper was defeated by their joint size; the portraits of his parents looking remote in Victorian settings, a Meerschaum pipe which he never smoked but liked the shape of, and one or two home-made contraptions which he fondly believed to be practical. At present he was going through a phase of cardboard boxes and had devised a mousetrap out of an upside-down lid propped up by a pencil with a piece of cheese at the base. As the mouse ate the cheese the lid would drop down over it and Papa would then somehow extract the mouse and give it its freedom in Russell Square. So far he had had little success.

  “How is your mouse?” asked Anna.

  “Still at liberty,” said Papa. “I saw it last night. It has a very English face.”

  Max shifted restlessly on the bed beside her.

  “No one is worrying about the war in Cambridge,” he was saying to Mama. “I went to see the Recruiting Board the other day and they told me very firmly not to volunteer but to get my degree first.”

  “Because of your scholarship!” cried Mama proudly.

  “No, Mama,” said Max. “It’s the same for all my friends. Everyone has been told to leave it for a couple of years. Perhaps by then Papa might be naturalised.” After four years of public school and nearly two terms at Cambridge Max looked, sounded and felt English. It was maddening for him not to be legally English as well.

  “If they make an exception for him,” said Mama.

  Anna looked at Papa and tried to imagine him as an Englishman. It was very difficult. Just the same she cried, “Well, they should! He’s not just anyone – he’s a famous writer!”

  Papa glanced round the shabby room.

  “Not very famous in England,” he said.

  There was a pause and then Max got up to go. He embraced Mama and Papa and made a face at Anna. “Walk to the tube with me,” he said. “I’ve hardly seen you.”

  They went down the many stairs in silence and as usual the residents of the lounge glanced at Max admiringly as he and Anna walked through. He had always been handsome with his fair hair and blue eyes – not like me, thought Anna. It was nice being with him, but she wished she could have sat a little longer before setting out again.

  As soon as they emerged from the hotel Max said in English, “Well, how are things?”

  “All right,” said Anna. Max was walking fast and her feet were aching. “Papa is depressed because he offered himself to the BBC for broadcasting propaganda to Germany, and they won’t have him.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “It seems he’s too famous. The Germans all know that he’s violently anti-Nazi, so they won’t take any notice of anything he says. At least that’s the theory.”

  Max shook his head. “I thought he looked old and tired.” He waited for her to catch him up before he asked, “And what about you?”

  “Me? I don’t know.” Suddenly Anna didn’t seem to be able to think of anything but her feet. “I suppose I’m all right,” she said vaguely.

  Max looked worried. “But you like your art course?” he asked. “You enjoy that?”

  The feet receded slightly from Anna’s consciousness.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it’s all so hopeless, isn’t it, when no one has any money? I mean, you read about artists leaving their homes to live in a garret, but if your family is living in a garret already…! I thought perhaps I should get a job.”

  “You’re not sixteen yet,” said Max and added almost angrily, “I seem to have had all the luck.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Anna. “A major scholarship to Cambridge isn’t luck.”

  They had arrived at Russell Square tube station and one of the lifts was about to close its gates, ready to descend.

  “Well—” said Anna, but Max hesitated.

  “Listen,” he cried, “why don’t you come up to Cambridge for a weekend?” And as Anna was about to demur, “I can manage the money. You could meet some of my friends and I could show you round a bit – it would be fun!” The lift gates creaked and he made a dash for it. “I’ll write you the details,” he cried as he and the lift sank from sight.

  Anna walked slowly back to the hotel. Mama and Papa were waiting for her at one of the tables in the lounge and a faded German lady had joined them.

  “…the opera in Berlin,” the German lady was saying to Papa. “You were in the third row of the stalls. I remember my husband pointing you out. I was so excited, and you wrote a marvellous piece about it next morning in the paper.”

  Papa was smiling politely.

  “Lohengrin, I think,” said the German lady. “Unless it was the Magic Flute or perhaps Aîda. Anyway, it was wonderful. Everything was wonderful in those days.”

  Then Papa saw Anna. “Excuse me,” he said. He bowed to the German lady and he and Mama and Anna went into the dining-room for lunch.

  “Who was that?” asked Anna.

  “The wife of a German publisher,” said Papa. “She got out but the Nazis killed her husband.”

  Mama said, “God knows what she lives on.”

  It was the usual Sunday lunch, served by a Swiss girl who was trying to learn English but was more likely to pick up a bit of Polish in this place, thought Anna. There were prunes for pudding and there was some difficulty afterwards about paying for Anna’s meal. The Swiss waitress said she would put it on the bill, but Mama said no, it was not an extra item since she herself had missed dinner on the previous Tuesday when she wasn’t feeling well. The waitress said she wasn’t sure if it was all right to transfer meals from one person to another. Mama got excited and Papa looked unhappy and said, “Please don’t make a scene.” In the end the manageress had to be consulted and decided that it was all right this time but must not be regarded as a precedent. By this time a lot of the good had gone out of the day.

  “Shall we sit down here or shall we go upstairs?” said Mama when they were back in the lounge – but the German lady was looming and Anna didn’t want to talk about the opera in Berlin, so they went upstairs. Papa perched on the chair, and Anna and Mama sat on the bed.

  “I mustn’t forget to give you your fare money for next week,” said Mama, opening her handbag.

  Anna looked at her.

  “Mama,” she said, “I think I ought to get a job.”

  Chapter Two

  Anna and Mama were sitting in the waiting room of the Relief Organisation for German Jewish Refugees.

  “If only they’ll help us with the fees for this secretarial course,” said Mama for at least the sixth time, “you’ll always be able to earn your living.”

  Anna nodded.

  All round the room other German refugees were sitting on hard chairs like Mama and herself, waiting t
o be interviewed. Some were talking in nervous, high-pitched voices. Some were reading newspapers – Anna counted one English, one French, two Swiss and one Yiddish. An elderly couple were eating buns out of a paper bag and a thin man was hunched up in a corner by himself, staring into space. Every so often the receptionist came in and called out a name and the owner of the name followed her out.

  “You’ll have something to build on,” said Mama, “which I’ve never had, and you’ll always be independent.”

  She had at first been taken aback by Anna’s suggestion of getting a job but then had thrown herself into the search for some suitable training with her usual energy. She had been adamant that Anna must have training of some sort, but it was hard to decide what. A secretarial course was the obvious choice, but Anna’s complete inability to learn shorthand had been one of her many failures at Miss Metcalfe’s. “It’s not so much that it’s difficult but it’s so boring!” she had cried, and Miss Metcalfe had smiled pityingly as usual and had pointed out that arrogance never helped anyone.

  Mama had quite understood about the shorthand and by dint of asking everyone she knew for advice had discovered a secretarial school where they taught a different system. It was not written down but tapped out on a little machine like a typewriter and had the further advantages of being quickly learned and easily adapted to other languages. The only trouble was that the full course cost twenty-five pounds.

  “Mr and Mrs Zuckerman!” The receptionist had come in again, catching the elderly couple in the middle of their buns. They hastily stuffed the half-eaten remains back into the paper bag and followed her out.

  “I think we’re bound to get some help,” said Mama. “We’ve never asked for anything before.” She had not wanted to ask the Refugee Organisation even this time, and it was only the fear that Anna, like herself, might have to get a job without any qualifications that had persuaded her. Mama spent five and a half days a week in a basement office typing and filing letters, and she hated it.

  “Mr Rubenstein! Mr and Mrs Berg!”

  A woman opposite Mama shifted uneasily. “What a long time they keep you waiting!” she cried. “I don’t think I can bear to sit here much longer, I really don’t!”

  Her husband frowned. “Now then, Bertha,” he said. “It’s better than queueing at the frontier.” He turned to Anna and Mama. “My wife’s a bit nervous. We had a bad time in Germany. We only just managed to get out before the war started.”

  “Oh, it was terrible!” wailed the woman. “The Nazis were shouting and threatening us all the time. There was one poor old man and he thought he’d got all his papers right, but they punched him and kicked him and wouldn’t let him go. And then they shouted at us, ‘You can go now, but we’ll still get you in the end!’”

  “Bertha …” said her husband.

  “That’s what they said,” cried the woman. “They said, ‘We’re going to get you wherever you go because we’re going to conquer the world!’ ”

  The man patted her arm and smiled at Mama in embarrassment.

  “When did you leave Germany?” he asked.

  “In March 1933,” said Mama. Among refugees, the earlier you had left the more important you were. To have left in 1933 was like having arrived in America on the Mayflower, and Mama could never resist telling people the exact month.

  “Really,” said the man, but his wife was unimpressed. She looked at Anna with her frightened eyes.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said.

  Anna closed her mind automatically. She never thought about what it was like in Germany.

  “Miss Goldstein!”

  The next person to be called was a woman in a worn fur coat, clutching a briefcase. Then came a bespectacled man whom Mama recognised as a minor violinist and then suddenly it was Anna’s and Mama’s turn. The receptionist said, “You want the students’ section,” and led them to a room where a grey-haired lady was waiting behind a desk. She was reading through the application form which Anna had filled in before making the appointment and looked like a headmistress, but nicer than Miss Metcalfe.

  “How do you do,” she said, waving them into two chairs. Then she turned to Anna and said, “So you want to be a secretary.”

  “Yes,” said Anna.

  The grey-haired lady glanced at her form. “You did extremely well in your School Certificate examinations,” she said. “Didn’t you want to stay on at school?”

  “No,” said Anna.

  “And why was that?”

  “I didn’t like it,” said Anna. “And almost no one stayed on after School Certificate.” She hesitated. “They didn’t teach us very much.”

  The lady consulted the form again. “The Lilian Metcalfe School For Girls,” she said. “I know it. Snob rather than academic. What a pity.” And having thus disposed of it, she applied herself to solving the problems of Anna’s secretarial course. Had Anna tried it? How long would it take? And what sort of job did Anna have in mind? Buoyed up by the demolition of Miss Metcalfe, Anna answered fully and less shyly than usual, and after a surprisingly short time the lady said, “Well, that all seems very satisfactory.”

  For a moment Anna thought it was all over, but the lady said a little reluctantly to Mama, “Forgive me, but there are so many people needing help that I have to ask you a few questions as well. How long have you been in this country?”

  “Since 1935,” said Mama, “but we left Germany in March 1933 …”

  Anna had heard it all explained so many times that she almost knew it by heart. Six months in Switzerland…two years in France…the Depression…the film script on the strength of which they had come to England…No, the film had never been made…No, it didn’t seem to matter then that Papa didn’t speak English because the script had been translated, but now of course…A writer without a language …

  “Forgive me,” said the lady again, “I do realise that your husband is a very distinguished man, but while you’re in this difficulty, is there not anything more practical he could do, even for a little while?”

  Papa, thought Anna, who couldn’t bang a nail in straight, who couldn’t boil an egg, who could do nothing but put words together, beautifully.

  “My husband,” said Mama, “is not a practical man. He is also a good deal older than I am.” She had flushed a little and the lady said very quickly, “Of course, of course, do excuse me.”

  It was funny, thought Anna, that she should be so much more impressed by Papa’s age which no one meeting him would particularly notice, than by his impracticality, which stuck out a mile. Once, in Paris, Papa had spent nearly all the money they had on a sewing machine which didn’t work. Anna remembered going with him to try and return it to the second-hand dealer who had landed him with it. They had had no money in Paris either, but somehow it hadn’t mattered. She had felt as though she belonged there, not like a refugee.

  Mama was telling the lady about her job.

  “For a while I worked as social secretary,” she said. “To Lady Parker – you may have heard of her. But then her husband died and she moved to the country. So now I’m helping sort out the papers belonging to his estate.”

  The lady looked embarrassed. “And – er – how much …?”

  Mama told her how much she earned.

  “I have no qualifications, you see,” she said. “I studied music as a girl. But it helps to pay the bills at the Hotel Continental.”

  Perhaps, thought Anna, she had felt different in Paris because Mama hadn’t had to work, or because they had lived in a flat instead of a hotel – or perhaps it was simply that England didn’t suit her. She didn’t really know a lot of English people, of course, only the ones at Miss Metcalfe’s. But certainly a lot of things had gone wrong for her soon after her arrival. For one thing she had grown much fatter, bulging in unexpected places, so that all her clothes suddenly looked hideous on her. Mama had said it was puppy fat and that she would lose it again, and in fact much of it had already melted away, but Anna
still suspected England of being somehow to blame. After all, she had never been fat before.

  The other girls at boarding-school had been fat too – Anna remembered great red thighs in the changing room and heavy figures lumbering over the frozen grass of the lacrosse field. But at least they hadn’t been shy. Her shyness was the worst thing that had happened to Anna in England. It had come upon her soon after the puppy fat, quite unexpectedly, for she had always been easy with people. It had paralysed her, so that when the English girls had made fun of her for being bad at lacrosse and for speaking with a funny accent, she hadn’t been able to answer. She had never had this trouble with Judy and Jinny, who were American.

  “Well, Anna,” said the grey-haired lady as though she had been listening to Anna’s thoughts, “I hope you’ll enjoy the secretarial course more than your time at Miss Metcalfe’s.”

  Anna came back to earth. Was it all settled then?

  “I’ll speak to my committee tomorrow,” said the lady, “but I’m quite sure that there will be no difficulty.” And as Anna stammered her thanks she said, “Nonsense! I think you’ll be a very good investment.”

  The sun had come out and it was quite warm while Anna and Mama walked back to the hotel.

  “How much do you think I’ll be able to earn?” asked Anna.

  “I don’t know,” said Mama, “but with your languages you should get at least three pounds.”

  “Every week!” said Anna. It seemed an enormous sum.

  Papa congratulated her, a little sadly.

  “I must say, I’d never seen you as a secretary,” he said and Anna quickly pushed aside the thought that she hadn’t either.

  “Papa,” she cried, “they said I was a good investment!”

  “There I agree with them,” said Papa. He was wearing his best suit, or the one he considered least worn at present, ready to go out. “A meeting of the International Writers’ Club,” he explained. “Would you like to come? It’s not much of a celebration, but there is to be a tea.”